


Fifteen Years of Separation

by reginahalliwell



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Look At Your Life Look At Your Choices, Oops, Post-Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 12:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14112393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginahalliwell/pseuds/reginahalliwell
Summary: “Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”  - Kahlil GibranIt's been fifteen years, but they finally figure it out. Post-AYITL, follows last four words.





	Fifteen Years of Separation

**Author's Note:**

> This just happened. It just wanted to be written, and out it flew.

Lorelai and Luke are off somewhere enjoying their finally-wedded bliss. Well, second-wedded.

Rory’s been holding the same glass of champagne all night, and people seem to just think she keeps refilling it, though she hasn’t taken a sip past the one to toast Luke and Lorelai at the beginning of the reception. She’s been toying with the idea of downing it all night, but if she did that it would mean she had decided to not keep the baby. Sure, she had been drinking when she didn’t know, but now that she did, she couldn’t very well knowingly endanger the safety of—

“You ever gonna drink that?” A voice drawls from nearby, breaking her out of her very uncomfortable train of thought. It’s Jess, emerging from the shadows. “You’ve barely touched it.”

“Why? You want it?” she asks, daring him to take it or to call her on what she thinks must be painfully obvious.

“Nah, more of a whiskey man. Say, it seems like the new Rory is too. Wanna go grab that bottle from your desk?” he asks, motioning across the street to the Stars Hollow Gazette office.

“I’m good here,” Rory declines. She knows he’s taunting her at this point.

“So, did you tell him yet?” Jess asks, cutting right to the chase.

She searches his eyes, wanting to not see the pain in them that she can’t help but notice. He knows. She knows he knows. She probably can read his mind right now. _Blond Dick at Yale_ , he’s probably betting. He’s right.

“Nope,” Rory answers, crossing her arm across her front to clasp the arm holding the champagne flute, covering a baby bump that isn’t there yet. She’s just making it more obvious.

“You going to?”

“Jess, I just told my mom this afternoon. I wasn’t really planning on doing much of anything tonight.”

“Right. Not drinking, not having fun, not thinking about your future.”

“Hey, not fair. I’m having fun.”

“Bullshit. You’re pretending to have fun for Babette and Kirk and everyone. You know it, your mom knows it, I know it. Luke doesn’t know it, but then he’s never been the most observant.”

“Fine. You’re right. I can’t stop thinking.”

“You know what helps with that? Alcohol. Tends to get rid of the thinking." She smacks him on the arm.

“I take it you’re not one to ‘write drunk, edit sober?’” 

Jess smirks and takes another sip from the tumbler in his hand, scratching his forehead with the back of his other hand. “You’ve read the book. You really believe a lot of thinking went into it?”

“Stop fishing for compliments. You know I think your book is amazing.”

Jess sighs. “So what are you thinking about, besides the obvious?”

“What’s obvious?”

“Well, I’m guessing…should you tell Logan? Should you even keep it? Would that be wrong? What about your mom? She raised a kid at 16, alone. Surely you could do it with a mom like her and, depending on the answer to the Logan question, a baby daddy with a trust fund. And I bet you’re thinking that this is either going to make or break your book. And that it’s sort of poetic but in the most cliché way. Oh, and you’re also thinking that you don’t know what else you’re going to do with your life, so what could a kid hurt?”

“That was disturbing. Did the words ‘baby daddy’ just come out of your mouth?”

“I’ll deny it if pressed.”

“Sure, Kerouac. My lips are sealed.” 

“So, was I right?”

“About what I’m thinking? Yes and no. Sure, all those thoughts have crossed my mind.” 

“But…?” 

“Well, at the moment that’s not what is dominating my thoughts. But then mommy brain must be setting in early.”

“Very funny.” Jess forces out an uncomfortably fake laugh, waiting for Rory to continue.

“Honestly?” she asks, looking at him and then down at her full glass of champagne. “Eh, what the hell,” she mutters to herself. She didn’t need liquid courage. She was on her way to becoming an unwed mother. Things could hardly get worse. “I was thinking about how strange it is that out of all the boyfriends I’ve had, you’re the only one I never slept with.”

There’s a moment of silence as Jess takes in what she’s just said. He downs the rest of his whiskey, a little less than a finger’s worth.

“Huh. Strange, you say?” This is not the direction Jess expected this conversation to go in when he came over.

“Well, yeah. The way I figure it, it should have been you, you know? I mean, with Dean things were so innocent. You were the first guy I thought it might happen with. Mom even took me to Planned Parenthood. We had to go to Hartford. It was a whole thing. And then it didn’t matter. You left, I went to college, a virgin. The thing with Dean—” 

Jess’s scoff breaks Rory out of her train of thought. She glares at him, but there’s no fire in her eyes.

“As I was saying, the thing with Dean was unexpected, and wrong, and not at all the way I thought I’d lose my virginity. And then I became this girl I never wanted to be, with a ‘casual’ thing with Logan and then an on-and-off thing with him. And then with Paul, and the Wookiee, and again with engaged Logan. Married Logan. Off-limits Logan.”

“So?” Jess is back to his monotonous ways. He’s eerily quiet, not sure where Rory is going with this but eager to find out.

“So I shouldn’t have actually been with any of them. I mean, I never thought I’d sleep with a married guy… two married guys. Well, it could be three—I don’t know about the Wookiee. And Paul, I dragged him around for so long. I don’t ever remember the last time we were in the same city. And you and me—it’s been fifteen years, Jess.”

She looks at him, this time seeking out the pain in his eyes, wanting to see if it matches her own.

“I know.”

“Do you ever think about it?” she asks, truly uncertain if she’s alone in this.

“It comes to mind from time to time,” he equivocates. At her look, he amends, “Of course I think about it. You think I feel good about the fact that right after me you went back to Dean? To married Dean? I hate it. I hate that you slept with him instead of me, and I hate that every time it seemed like I might actually be good enough for you, your life was fucked up or you were with Logan, or both.”

“We never did get the timing right,” she admits.

“No, we didn’t,” he says. “But, hey, maybe there’s hope.” He glances back at the party, where things have finally started to die down. It only took Luke and Lorelai twenty years. 

Rory looks down at her non-existent baby bump. “This isn’t how I thought it would be,” she says. “I thought I would be Christiane Amanpour by now. I thought I would have it all figured out. I would be in love, and maybe married, and settled.”

“Is that what you want?” he really wants to know. “You want to be settled?”

“No, I want to be…” she struggles to find the right words. He’s always the one with the right words, even if he can’t say them out loud. “I just want to be alive.” 

“You’re alive, Gilmore,” he assures her. “You’re doubly alive,” he says, gesturing to her stomach. 

“Really?” she asks sadly. “Because I think the last time I felt alive I was pretending so hard I started to believe it.”

“And before that?” he asks, knowing that sometimes being alive means being in pain.

“Jess,” she says, leaning in. “I know what I want.”

“Yeah?” he asks. “What’s that?”

Rory leans in and kisses him, her champagne spilling as she moves her hands to wrap around his shoulders, pulling him closer and closer until she can’t tell where she ends and he begins.

She pulls away, smiling at the surprised look in his eyes, the disbelief fading to joy as he starts to believe this might finally be happening for them.

At his look, Rory becomes decisive. She takes his hand and pulls him along. “Where are we going?” he asks.

“I’ve been waiting fifteen years, Jess. You better make it worth my while,” she challenges him, a twinkle in her eyes.

Jess emits a rich laugh, sauntering along next to her and thinking that maybe everything really could work out.


End file.
